Family-Making

Contemporary Ethical Challenges

Edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod

Description

This volume explores the ethics of making or expanding families through adoption or technologically assisted reproduction. For many people, these methods are separate and distinct: they can choose either adoption or assisted reproduction. But for others, these options blend together. For example, in some jurisdictions, the path of assisted reproduction for same-sex couples is complicated by the need for the partner who is not genetically related to the resulting child to adopt this child if she wants to become the child's legal parent. The essays in this volume critically examine moral choices to pursue adoption, assisted reproduction, or both, and highlight the social norms that can distort decision-making. Among these norms are those that favour people having biologically related children ('bionormativity') or that privilege a traditional understanding of family as a heterosexual unit with one or more children where both parents are the genetic, biological, legal, and social parents of these children. As a whole, the book looks at how adoption and assisted reproduction are morally distinct from one another, but also emphasizes how the two are morally similar. Choosing one, the other, or both of these approaches to family-making can be complex in some respects, but ought to be simple in others, provided that one's main goal is to become a parent.

Family-Making

Contemporary Ethical Challenges

Edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod

Table of Contents

Introduction, Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeodFamilies: Of Parents and Children 15 1: The Goods of Parenting, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift 2: The Goods of Childhood and Children's Rights, Samantha BrennanBionormativity: Philosophical and Empirical Perspectives 3: A Critique of the Bionormative Concept of the Family, Charlotte Witt 4: The Families of Assisted Reproduction and Adoption, Lucy Blake, Martin Richards, and Susan GolombokBecoming a Parent: Personal Choices 5: What is the Value of Procreation?, Christine Overall 6: The Unique Value of Adoption, Tina RulliBecoming a Parent: State Interests 7: State Regulation and Assisted Reproduction: Balancing the Interests of Parents and Children, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Daniel Weinstock 8: 'Not for the Faint of Heart': Assessing the Status Quo on Adoption and Parental Licensing, Carolyn McLeod and Andrew Botterell 9: On Non-Biological Maternity, or 'My Daughter is Going to be a Father!', Julie CrawfordSpecial Responsibilities of Parents 10: Special Responsibilities of Parents Using Technologically Assisted Reproduction, James Lindemann Nelson 11: Adoptee Vulnerability and Post-Adoptive Parental Obligation, Mianna Lotz 12: The Political Geography of Whites Adopting Black Children in the United States, Heath Fogg DavisContested Practices 13: Geneticizing the Desire to Know: Analogies to Adoption in Arguments Against Anonymous Gamete Donation, Kimberly Leighton 14: Transnational Commercial Contract Pregnancy in India, Françoise Baylis 15: Aged Parenting Through ART and Other Means, Jennifer A. Parks

Family-Making

Contemporary Ethical Challenges

Edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod

Author Information

Edited by Françoise Baylis, Dalhousie University, and Carolyn McLeod, University of Western Ontario

Françoise Baylis is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University, Canada, and founder of the NovelTechEthics research team. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Her research interests are many and varied, and she has a love of thought-provoking questions. Her publications on the ethics of assisted human reproduction and human embryo research span more than thirty years. In addition to her academic research on reproductive ethics, she contributes to national policy via government research contracts, membership on national committees, and public education. This work—all of which is informed by a strong commitment to the common good—focuses largely on issues of social justice. Her website is http://noveltechethics.ca. Her blog is http://impactethics.ca.

Carolyn McLeod is Associate Professor of Philosophy, an Affiliate Member of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests lie at the intersection of health care ethics, feminist theory, and moral theory. She has had a long-standing interest in reproductive ethics, beginning with her book, Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy (MIT Press, 2002). She has published on various topics in this area, including reproductive autonomy, the commodification of womens reproductive labour, and conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide reproductive health services such as abortions. Recently, her knowledge of the ethics of having children has broadened to include issues that concern adoption. Her website is http://carolynmcleod.com.

Contributors:

Françoise Baylis, Dalhousie University Lucy Blake, University of Cambridge Andrew Botterell, Western University Samantha Brennan, Western University Harry Brighouse, University of Wisconsin Julie Crawford, Columbia University Jurgen de Wispelaere, McGill University Heath Fogg Davis, Temple University Susan Golombok, University of Cambridge Kimberly Leighton, American University Mianna Lotz, Macquarie University Carolyn McLeod, Western University James Lindemann Nelson, Michigan State University Christine Overall, Queen's University Jennifer Parks, Loyola University of Chicago Martin Richards, University of Cambridge Tina Rulli, Purdue University, Adam Swift, University of Warwick Daniel Weinstock, McGill University Charlotte Witt, University of New Hampshire